Between Paraphrasing and Becoming Another Self: Possible Plasticities in (Auto)biographical Narratives of People with Multiple Sclerosis

Abstract

This presentation is part of a research in progress entitled “(Auto)biographies and subjectivities: the other of himself in multiple sclerosis”, that investigates the subjectivation processes in the life stories of people affected by multiple sclerosis, organized in the research of life stories of the Museum of the Person, SP. In this work, I aim to understand the narrative plasticities that the authors of those stories mobilize from the concept of time. Based on Koselleck (2014), I highlight the synchronic and diachronic factors of the consciousness conditioning and I perceive how plastic the narratives are in comparison to the experiences with the disease over time. About the synchronic factors, the narratives cover from the diagnosis moment to the point that they do a digression for the accommodation of the disease in life. All the experiences in this time originate from the events, both symptoms and prognosis, in synchrony with what is known about the disease and that mark the affected ones. The hypothesis here is that there are experiences common to all and that generate similar significations in the narrative consciousness. Upon the diachronic factors, the sluices of memory are extended also considering the life stories before the disease, identifications, values, religion, gender, choices. I notice that the factors that constitute the consciousness, and that appear in the narrative, present multiple fragments of the time previous to the experience with the disease, but also its effects, that continue to transform the subjectivities. A bigger narrative plasticity reveals itself against the opening of another sluice by the accommodations with the disease in life. In the experience of helplessness, between the hope for healing in the future and the fear of the loss of neurological faculties, this plasticity shows itself in the narratives as strength.